Throughout the 1990s, the library of the Cinémathèque suisse was located on the second floor of the Casino de Montbenon, which, at the time, comprised more than 19,000 international film publications. During the same period, 80,000 documentary records – indexed by director and containing press cuttings, articles, reports, reviews, biographies, illustrated programs and promotional material from the time (press books) – were stored in the first-floor gallery. Even then, the library had a consultation room open to the public.
In 2012, the library relocated to the Research and Archiving Centre in Penthaz. Since the centre’s renovation and inauguration in 2019, the consultation room now benefits from state-of-the-art facilities and controlled temperature and humidity to ensure the long-term preservation of its historical documents.
It now comprises around 30,000 monographs, 10,000 scripts, 730,000 periodical issues and 240,000 documentary records. The library’s role is to document the history of Swiss and international cinema by collecting documents on the technical advances since 1895, as well as cinematic analyses, biographies and festival catalogues from around the world. The library’s catalogue is now available on Renouvaud, the Vaud library network.